The bad sailers of all fleets or convoys are daily and hourly execrated in every note of the gamut; and it must be owned that the detention they cause, when a fine fresh breeze is blowing, is excessively provoking to all the rest, and mortifying to themselves.  Sometimes the progress of one haystack of a vessel is so slow that a fast-sailing ship is directed to take her in tow, and fairly lug her along.  As this troublesome operation requires for its proper execution no small degree of nautical knowledge, as well as dexterity, and must be performed in the face of the whole squadron, it is always exposed to much sharp criticism.  The celerity with which sail is set, or taken in, by the respective ships, or the skill with which broken spars are shifted, likewise furnish such abundant scope for technical table-talk, that there is seldom any want of topic in the convoy.  Sailors, indeed, are about as restless as the element on which they float; and their hands are generally kept pretty full by the necessity of studying the fluctuating circumstances of wind and weather, together with due attention to the navigation.

These occupations served to give a high degree of interest to this Indian voyage, which, to most of us, was the first; the mere circumstance of having to pass successively and quickly through a number of different climates, first in the order of increasing warmth, and then in the reverse order of increasing cold, was of itself most striking.  The change of latitude being the chief cause of these phenomena, a succession of astronomical variations were necessarily attendant upon the progress of the voyage; easily explained by reasonings, and the actual, practical exhibition, as it may be termed, of the truths of astronomical science failed not to strike the unfamiliarised imagination as both wonderful and beautiful.

When we sailed from England the weather was very cold, raw, and uncomfortable; and although we had a couple of days’ fair wind at starting, we were met in the very chops of the channel by hard-hearted southerly and south-westerly winds, which tried our patience sorely.  On the evening of the tenth day we caught a glimpse of the north coast of Spain; and the rugged shore of Galicia was the last which most of us saw of Europe for many years.  It was not till after a fortnight’s hard struggling against these tiresome south-westers that we anchored in Funchal Roads, having by the way dropped several of our convoy.  These stray sheep came in during the few days we remained to refresh ourselves at this most charming of resting-places.  After nearly a week’s enjoyment, we proceeded on our course to the southward; within three days we came in sight of Palma, the most northern of the Canary Island group.  It was thirty miles distant in the south-east quarter; and Teneriffe, the sea “monarch of mountains,” lay too far off for us to perceive even his “diadem of snow,” which at that season (April), I presume, he always wears.  Some years after the period in question, when I paid him a visit, in the month of August, the very tip-top was bare, and the thermometer at 70 deg..